


Between These Lines

by HauntedByDayDreams



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: At least Yuuri didn't have a stripper pole this time, Confident Katsuki Yuuri, Domestic Fluff, Domestic Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Drunk Katsuki Yuuri, Drunk Yuuri has more confidence than Eros Yuuri, Drunk Yuuri thinks he can sing, Fluff, Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov Fluff, M/M, Married Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, POV Victor Nikiforov, Phichit Chulanont is a Little Shit, Phichit totally took pictures for blackmail, Possessive Victor Nikiforov, Supportive Victor Nikiforov, VictUuri, Victor really wishes he was there, Victor wouldn't want to miss that, Yuuri won't stop taking his clothes off when drunk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 11:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11736012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HauntedByDayDreams/pseuds/HauntedByDayDreams
Summary: "Listen, Viktor, I'm already in hot water because I told Yuri I wouldn't let him get drunk tonight, but he'll kick my ass if I don't get him sobered up before his red-eye flight. Think you can get through to him?"Viktor's head was spinning with the sudden information overload. Shirtless? Karaoke? Was Yuriafter-partylevels of drunk again? "I'll certainly try."--A series of fluffy one-shots focused on the daily life of Katsuki Yuri and Viktor Nikiforov.





	1. Cure for a Hang-over

**Author's Note:**

> "We could fall between these lines if you would work with me  
> I could pull you from this cellar, we could break these chains together  
> And you'll become just what you were always meant to be  
> From this darkness we're escaping  
> As we're climbing from the belly of the sea"
> 
> \-- _Deas Vail_ , "Life in These Little Boats"

It was late afternoon and an empty, uncomfortable silence blanketed Viktor's world like Yuri's favourite scratchy blue comforter. It was the kind of quiet that made him hyper-self-aware, alone with only his thoughts and the intermittent rumble of the icemaker busy at work. Once, Viktor might have called such a state peaceful. Now, though, he would admit to himself that it was painfully lonely.

Makkachin dozed lazily, snuggled between Viktor's legs and the arm of the couch, occasionally emitting a half-hearted snort in her sleep. As he once again scrolled through his social media feeds to occupy his idle mind, Viktor couldn't help but feel a pang of regret for his abject situation. After all, as pure-intentioned as it had been, Yuri leaving had been his idea.

"If you keep turning down Phichit's offers to visit, you could very well lose him as a friend," Viktor had scolded Yuri as they had stepped into their apartment's elevator a few days prior. It was an especially cold day in Saint Petersburg, and a healthy flush painted their noses and cheeks as they relished the warmth of indoor heating. Yuri tucked his icy hands into his armpits and rocked on the balls of his feet as he frowned at the floor.

"I just haven't wanted to leave you."

Viktor had concealed his smile by turning away to jab at the correct button. He hadn't wanted Yuri to think flattery could sway him; which it definitely could, and would, if Yuri utilised it correctly.

"I think you should visit him," Viktor had persisted. "He obviously wants to see you, and socialising could do you no harm."

"I socialise enough with _you_ ," Yuri had sighed. Viktor managed to suppress another smile; although he wanted Yuri to obtain and maintain healthy relationships, he couldn't help the burgeoning feelings of pride and possessiveness at Yuri's sentiment. _If I have you, I don't need anyone else._

In the end Yuri obliged Viktor and bought a ticket to Thailand; after all, he did want to see Phichit. Viktor had urged Yuri to visit Phichit out of concern for his well-being, but now, as Viktor sat alone in a dark and empty apartment, he began to wonder if it wasn't _him_ who had the problem. Apart from Yuri's frequent texts-- and selfies (which Viktor had to plead for)-- Viktor was mind-numbingly, inescapably, waiting in line at the DMV levels of _bored_. Ostensibly a fun-loving celebutante, Viktor found that he really had very few pastimes in his life besides ice-skating-- none that he enjoyed alone, anyway. Watching television even lost its charm when he had no one to commentate to.

Was he really so dull..?

His phone buzzed with an incoming call, and Viktor would have been embarrassed at the speed and obvious desperation with which he answered it if was any other person calling. 

"Yuri!" he answered happily, not bothering to conceal his excitement. He'd already shamelessly conveyed through text no less than six times how much he missed his other half. "How goes your escapades with Phichit?"

"Ah, no, not Yuri," came a sheepish voice over the line. Viktor's brow furrowed in confusion at the unexpected voice.

"Oh, Phichit! Hello! I thought my caller ID showed Yuri's face just now." Though, admittedly, he hadn't taken much time to check as he'd been busy almost cracking his screen hitting "Accept."

"That would make sense since this is his phone." The man paused, and in the background Viktor could hear the faint music of the bar Yuri had complained about being dragged to a while ago. "I nabbed it from him before he could start drunk-dialing."

"Drunk dialing..?" So Yuri had been drinking? Ignoring the jealousy that flared up at missing Yuri's inebriated antics, he chose to focus on the more noble emotion of concern as he checked the time. Eight. That meant-- "It's twelve o'clock there." Why exactly Katsuki-Nikiforov Yuri was drinking at twelve in the morning was the unspoken--and valid-- question.

"Yeah. Well, maybe I should have listened to Yuri when he said he wanted to leave. He just had a few mojitos and the next thing I knew he was starting a shots line when I was busy taking self-- when I was in the bathroom. Now he's got his shirt off and is singing karaoke. Listen, Viktor, I'm already in hot water because I told Yuri I wouldn't let him get drunk tonight, but he'll kick my ass if I don't get him sobered up before his red-eye flight. Think you can get through to him?"

Viktor's head was spinning with the sudden information overload. Shirtless? Karaoke? Was Yuri _after-party_ levels of drunk again? "I'll certainly try."

"Okay, I'm putting you on speaker." The volume of the music increased, and Viktor's eyes crinkled with mirth as he heard Yuri's voice cracking to the chorus of "I'll Always Love You." "That's the only part he somewhat knows," Phichit explained over the ruckus of people laughing and mucking about in the background, "so he just keeps singing it over and over." Phichit was quietly for a moment as he presumably approached Yuri before Viktor heard, "'Ey! Yuri!"

"Ooooh, Phichit-kun!" Yuri's words slapped together gracelessly, accentuated even more by the fact he was speaking in his second tongue. "Duet with me? Ha, get it? Duet? Do it? 'S a funny word thingy."

"God, I wish I could Instagram this... Yuri, your husband is on the phone! Come down here and talk to him."

"Vitya?" There was an alarming thud and yelp, but before Viktor had time to worry Yuri's bright voice blasted from Viktor's receiver. "VITYA!"

Viktor almost dropped the phone in surprise, and Makkachin's ears perked up in her sleep. To avoid rousing her, Viktor slipped smoothly off of the sofa and moved into his bedroom as Phichit attempted to explain, "Yuri, no Yuri, it's on speakerphone, you don't have to hold it to your mouth..."

Yuri apparently was paying his friend no mind as he, from Viktor's perspective, continued to yell, "VITYA, I THINK I WON TH' SINGIN' CONTEST." 

"Oh, really?" Viktor sat on the edge of the bed, phone held a short distance from his ear. "Maybe you should give up ice-skating and instead pursue music."

Yuri gasped. "MAYBE I SHOULD!"

"Oi, gimme that!" There was a rustle as Phichit wrestled the phone away. "Viktor, enabling him is _my_ job! Now talk some sense into him."

Viktor smirked. "Yuri, you should probably give the alcohol a rest for the night."

"But Viktooor!" Yuri crooned in only a way drunken Yuri could, his voice now a suitable volume. "I misss youuu..."

"You're going to see me in the morning."

"Wassat?"

"You're coming home in the morning. But solnyshko, security won't let you on the plane if you're obviously drunk."

Yuri lapsed into a frantic babble of Japanese before he seemed to remember who he was talking to. "Bu-but I _need_ to get on th' plaane..."

"I know. So you should probably go to Phichit's now and drink lots of water." Viktor smiled, knowing he'd gotten through to Yuri. "That way you can see me in the morning, okay?"

"Yesss! I willl... drink _all_ the watah for Vitya!"

***

"You look like you had a fun night," Viktor smirked as he enveloped Yuri into a snug embrace outside the airport terminal. Yuri's articulate answer was a pitiful moan as he melted into Viktor's arms, pressing his face into the Russian's shoulder. His glasses were askew, dark patches encircling his eyes, and his hair was more unruly and untamed even than usual. Yuri would later go on to tell Viktor that he felt like the poster-child for a "drink in moderation" campaign.

"They wouldn't even let me board at first because they thought I looked sick," Yuri mumbled morosely as Viktor picked up his bags and led him out of the airport with a secure arm around his waist. "Phichit showed them some pictures he took of me last night to convince them I was just really hung-over, and they all had a good laugh at my expense. And on the plane, a baby was screaming the entire time we were in the air."

"At least you're home," Viktor said, nuzzling his cheek against the top of Yuri's head. (He mentally made a note to get those pictures from Phichit later.) "I've missed you."

Yuri's face seared with heat, and he smiled despite the unpleasant churning sensation in his belly. "I missed you, too, Viktor. Of course." His face pinched as his temples throbbed as sunlight, cruel and unrelenting, slapped him as they stepped outside. Viktor uttered a stifled laugh, squeezing Yuri against his side sympathetically.

"Don't worry, solnyshko. I have a hang-over remedy mixed up for you at home."

"Oh, God," Yuri breathed, "yes."


	2. Moments at the Eye Checkup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuri and Viktor have eye appointments, and Viktor marvels at "the little things."

"I made us both appointments to get our eyes checked."

Viktor choked on his ramen and gaped at Yuri, who seemed perfectly unphased slurping his noodles. "What? Why?"

"Well, I told you I thought I needed a stronger prescription for my lenses. Everything is getting a little unfocused..."

"No, I mean why did you make _me_ an appointment?"

Yuri paused with his chopsticks halfway en route to his mouth. "It's good to have check-ups, right?" His eyes took on a conspiratorial twinkle as he smirked. "Why, Vitya? Are you afraid?"

What Viktor meant to sound like a scoff came out more as a heavy sigh. "No. Of course not." 

***

Viktor was afraid.

"They're going to touch your eyes?" he queried frenetically; his hands on his knees bounced as he nervously tapped his feet to a breakneck rhythm.

"That, or he might just blow a puff of air into them. It's to test for glaucoma." Yuri took his glasses off to clean them on the hem of his shirt, missing the way Viktor nervously gulped in reaction to his words. "The worst part for me, though, is the drops they put in your eyes to dilate them."

"They won't do all that to me if I pass the eye tests, though," Viktor said, managing to catch Yuri's now unobstructed but slightly hazy gaze. "Right?"

"Uh..." 

The door opened then, revealing a petite middle-aged nurse with wipsy greying hair and a soured face. "Who's going first?" she asked without even bothering to look at them, her attention on the chart in her hands that she was already scribbling on. Yuri had already decided ahead of time that he would go first to hopefully allay some of Viktor's fears. He stood, handing Viktor his glasses, as Viktor's eyes shone with wordless gratitude.

"Me," he said, slipping into the padded chair equipped with it's mask with several dozen arrays of lenses. "Katsuki-Nikiforov Yuri."

The tests began with simple instructions: read the sheet of paper held arms-length away, put on the 3D glasses and point at the objects that seemed to jump off the page, follow a finger with his eyes. All of these he accomplished with ease, and soon he'd been handed a short stick with a rounded plastic bit on the end meant to cover one eye while reading the chart across the room. For someone as near-sighted as Yuri, this was the real challenge.

With his left eye he managed to read down to the fourth line, but when he switched to his right he stammered over the first row for a few seconds before conceding, "O? Q? C? I don't know. It's round?"

As the nurse bustled about in the drawers of the desk next to Yuri's seat, Yuri said to Viktor, "That was much worse than the last time I visited."

Viktor had been surprised to see how poor his husband's eyesight really was. "And how long ago was that?"

Yuri hummed to himself, glancing off to the side as he mulled over the question. "A few years? Too long, I'm sure." With that the conversation ceased as the nurse approached Yuri with the eyedrops. Yuri didn't have to keep his eyes open when she dropped the liquid into the corner of his eyes, but as soon as he blinked he hissed softly and worried his lower lip between his teeth.

"It's not that bad," he reassured Viktor, whom he (correctly) assumed was now panicking, though he couldn't actually see him through the liquid haze now in his eyes. "It burns a little at first." 

After he'd been permitted to dab away the excess liquid rolling like tears down his cheeks with a Kleenex, the glaucoma test began. It wasn't too uncomfortable, physically-- no more than on the occasions he wore his contacts. Actually, he was more worried for Viktor, who was surely watching the nurse's every move like a hawk-- a very apprehensive hawk.

"Good readings," the nurse said, backing up to let Yuri up, and that was it. _Viktor's turn._

"Don't worry," Yuri whispered as Viktor stood and handed Yuri his glasses. "It's not so bad--"

But Viktor was more preoccupied with staring into Yuri's eyes than making his way to the examination chair. "Your eyes are completely dilated," Viktor marveled, putting a hand to Yuri's cheek to gently turn his head from side-to-side as he inclined his own. "They're like... like... black pools of midnight sky."

Yuri was desperately trying to keep his blush under control, painfully aware that they weren't alone, though he was sure Viktor could feel the heat under his palm. "Weird, huh?" he asked as he slipped back on his glasses.

"Mm, but still beautiful," Viktor winked, knowing it would nudge Yuri into fully blushing (which it did). The nurse cleared her throat, then, clearly irritated.

"Come on, I don't have all day."

Viktor's eyesbrows pinched, and the harried look he cast at Yuri as he was ushered into the chair deeply worried Yuri.

***

"The nurse was extremely rude."

Yuri snorted as he pressed the button that called the elevator. "She was only reacting to you acting like an infant," he responded, folding his arms as he waited for the elevator to reach their floor. Viktor looked positively wounded.

"I was not!"

"You kept flinching away every time she got close to your eyes, and you refused to open them to let the dilation fluid in for, like, _three_ minutes. Not to mention you _grabbed her wrist_ during the glaucoma test."

"She was trying to _stab my eye_ ," Viktor retorted heatedly, his voice low. 

"You hissed at her!"

"She could have been more sympathetic!" Viktor paused and then mirrored Yuri, crossing his arms, eyes narrowing. "And what about the doctor, hm?"

"What about him?"

"He was all over you, Yuri! Even someone as blind as you could see that!"

Yuri knew the moment the doctor nudged his knees apart to better reach his eyes there would be hell to pay with Viktor. "They have to be like that with everyone, Viktor. He was like that with you, too. Besides, he had bad breath."

"...He did have terrible breath, didn't he?"

"Pungent," Yuri nodded acquiescently. "It smelled like a rabid rat crawled into his mouth and died."

Sated, Viktor smiled as the elevator doors parted with a _ding_ and they stepped inside. "Are you really going to be wearing your contacts for two weeks, then?"

Despite all of the chaos that came with his examination, Viktor's results had been unsurprisingly healthy. Although the doctor had suggested some mild reading glasses might be necessary later, Viktor's eyes had earned a clean bill of health; conversely, Yuri's eyes had weakened considerably since his last appointment. 

"Yeah. I could have just picked out new frames for them to out my updated lenses in, but I've had these for so long it feels wrong to choose something new. I don't really like contacts, but... Well, I suppose maybe I should consider new frames anyway. After all, everything has its time in the sun..."

Yuri trailed off, lost in thought, and Viktor's eyes caught on his pensive expression like a fly in a trap. _Everything has its time in the sun_ , he'd said, and Viktor wondered if he was only thinking of his glasses when he'd said that. 

Viktor's mind began to drift to a dark place, but refused to pander to such pessimistic ideas. Yuri would live forever (or at least longer than Viktor), and they would live _together_ forever. It was in their vows; it was a promise. Viktor Nikiforov didn't break his promises.

(As long as he remembered them...)

Yuri turned, then, and caught Viktor staring; he bit his lip to fight back a grin. "You can barely even see the blue in your eyes now," he laughed, pulling out his phone and switching on the camera app. He handed it to Viktor. "Look."

As Viktor suddenly swapped from studying his black-marbel eyes in the screen to taking rapid-fire selfies with Yuri dancing in-and-out of frame in the background, begging for him to stop while laughing all the while, Viktor realised that he could never find happiness again without these little moments to look forward to. Yuri had left his mark on every square-inch of his world in a way that no one else ever could.

Yuri was blushing as they made their way throught the hospital's main lobby. The elevator doors had opened unceremoniously to expose their selfie shenanigans to a small group waiting to board.

"Solnyshko, you embarrass too easily."

"I should run away with both our sunglasses and let your eyes shrivel up in the sunlight."

"You like my eyes too much to let them damage."

Yuri considered that for a moment.

Viktor gave Yuri a mollifying peck on the cheek as Yuri then fished their sunglasses from his backpack-- sunlight always had a magnifying-glass-on-an-anthill effect on dilated eyes-- and wrapped an arm around Yuri's waist. Yuri pushed Viktor's sunglasses onto the bridge of his nose and snaked his arm up Viktor's back as they exited together, arm-in-arm.

Yes, these were the moments he lived for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you think!

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you think!


End file.
